


harry of toussaint and the serpent’s maw

by cardangreenbriar



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Background Wolfstar, Bi!Ginny, Bi!Harry, Digital Art, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Grey!Dumbledore, Harry Is Snarky, Harry of Toussaint, M/M, Plot focused, Witcher!Sirius, antagonist!snape, antagonist!voldemort, draco doesn’t appear until later, first person harry, harry and sirius get bonding time, harry is a child surprise, here are the draco/harry tags:, honestly snape and dumbledore bashing that is plot-appropriate, movie!ginny? we don’t know her, shapeshifting!weasleys, sorceress!hermione, that’s it, witcher!harry, witcher!neville
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:01:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22822963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cardangreenbriar/pseuds/cardangreenbriar
Summary: There’s an end-time prophecy about a person of Elder Blood who will save the world from an apocalypse.“The Serpent’s Maw approaches, the time of the sword and axe. The Time of the Black Sky and Venom Flood, the Time of Madness and Disdain, Tedd Deireadh, the Final Age. The world will perish amidst darkness and be reborn...”Whatever.Harry, quite frankly, thinks this prophecy is shit, and really just wants to find out what happened to his parents.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Ginny Weasley/Luna Lovegood, Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley (minor), Hermione Granger/Pansy Parkinson
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	1. superstition

**Author's Note:**

> hey! i’m looking for an alpha/beta for this fic, preferably if you have good hp/witcher lore knowledge!

The evening air hanging over the harbor is so dense and cold that it weighs on one’s shoulders, smells like washed up fish and sodden dog, and feels like frostbite.

Severus carries the man, half-conscious, teetering on death, up a set of stone steps and into an old warehouse. It will be teaming with shiphands on the morrow, but for now it’s empty and warmer than the unforgiving sea air, at least.

Severus lays the man down not so gently on the mud-and-fiber floor. He spits up more water and it dribbles down his chin, so Severus turns him over to his side to prevent choking. Then Severus tucks up against the wall, swords laid beside him, arms hanging over his knees, and waits.

It’s nearly ten minutes to four in the morning when James Potter begins coughing up murky water. His heart had returned to a comfortable soon after being brought here- Severus was monitoring- and now, it seems, his body is coming back into it’s strength, warmth returning to his fingers and cheeks.

He smells like dead fish and Severus’ mouth is fixed into a grimace for being subjected to it for the majority of the night. But under that, somewhere deep in his tunic, or a kiss next to his ear perhaps, he still smells of Lily.

The Potter family was a wealthy one, and oh, it was quite the scandal when he took up with Lily Evans, even though she was part of the lower nobility. The Evans family sent their girls to tutors commissioned by the city, where the lowly children went, like Severus. And _that_ was a grave misstep according to their peers, and they were cast off thusly as fraternizing with the poor. So Lily Evans stood one foot in alleys, orphanages, and pubs on the outskirts, and one foot in horse races, masquerade balls, and mansions, her big sister Petunia tagging behind all the while. 

It was this wild, red-headed girl that Severus fell in love with in his youth, certain he would make something better of himself than a nameless orphan so that he could give her a life she deserved, as good or better than she was brought up. One day, a Witcher clad in soot-black arrived to the orphanage to pick out strong boys, and Severus begged to be taken. The Witcher laughed at him, picked on his scrawny, lanky frame and beakish nose. He chased their cart three miles out of the city before they let him get in, heels bloodied and later infected so badly that he couldn’t stand for a month.

Except when Severus survived the Trial of the Grasses and returned to Beauclair to find her, she was living in the Potter estate. _The Silver Stag_ , they called Potter. And here he is now, just shy of a year after Severus’ return, silk shirt soiled with sea water, laying at his feet. It’s amazing how hurriedly men bend at the bribe of a bag of coin.

Potter’s consciousness returns to him just enough to allow confusion and he shoots up, then scrambles back at the sight of Severus. “Where are we?” he shouts, voice hoarse. He grips his throat, then his chest, and takes in the sight of his own miry clothes. Severus tosses him his glasses; what a wench the dive for them was, after he’d thrown Potter up on the deck. They sunk all the hundred feet to the bottom of the harbor and embedded in the swirling muck, and Severus nearly abandoned them. It was a vindictive thing, the motive which made him retrieve the glasses. Potter would need them.

“You stumbled off of the dock trying to come off your ship, drunk,” Severus says simply, no strain to keep the solemn composure that is so natural to a witcher. As a boy, he might have grown red-faced for the lie. White Honey is a potent anti-toxin for witchers, but to humans, it’s a sedative so strong, it’s deadly. Someone on the ship distilled a few drops given in a vial into James Potter’s costly wine. “You nearly drowned, and your men were either too in their drink or too moronic to take notice.”

“And _why_ ,” James squints his eyes, “were _you_ loitering around my ship just as I happen to fall in the harbor,” he sputters, unbelieving.

“I suppose I won’t give you an answer you’ll like, but it’s lucky I was, nonetheless, isn’t it?”

James just stares, spectacles cracked in one lens.

Severus sighs and stands, realizing he must bear this farce for just a little longer before it will grant him his fruit. He outstretches his hand, offering to pull James from the floor. “I was taking a contract from the Port Master. Animal has been stealing cargo at night.”

James nods then, takes Severus’ hand and wobbles a bit on his footing. He tries to correct the lay of his tunic, but it’s no use to his appearance. “I suppose I owe you my gratitude,” James says, shakily, but not from the recent stress to his lungs and throat. Severus can smell the fear on him, the _dread_. It smells like licorice, if it could rot.

“You may owe me a bit more,” Severus says.

“As it’s right,” James sighs heavily, scrubbing his temples with thumb and forefinger, “Do what you will.”

“I invoke the Law of Surprise,” Severus whispers, “Give me the first thing you see when you walk through the threshold of your home.” He wonders if fate will grant him this, even if he has exploited her so. A cursed and lonely man it may make him, but what else is a witcher already, than cursed, than lonely?

James nods, leans over to fix the tie of his boot, then leaves.


	2. mother’s tears

Harry walks into the laboratory of Kaer Morhen, where the elder witchers have lined up twenty-three table-like contraptions in messy sequence along the wall. There is a hooded old man, one of the mages most like, resting heavily against a table in the center, which is covered in cauldrons that are bubbling and shining all different manners of potions. Each boy was instructed to remove their armor, wear only underclothes, and to meet here at midnight. The apprentice mages are scurrying about like chickens without heads, pushing glass potion-dripping mechanisms into their proper spaces. 

“Alright,” Uncle Sirius walks up to the group of naked boys, “Please choose a table, best not near your friends, and grab a knife.”

Some of the older witchers, the ones who went through the previous Trial of the Grasses, are sitting by the fire, knocking back ale, and looking on with deadened expressions. Their wolf head medallions hang there, sure as shit, from each neck, a little taunting thing. Harry looks over and says a silent promise to himself he will never watch this happen to someone else. 

The hooded mage lifts his head against the significant bowing of his spine, and just beneath the shadow Harry can tell that he is smiling. He is the only one in the room, in which there are maybe seventy others in total, who is smiling, Harry is sure. Harry grabs a table just by the window, where moonlight is pouring in. Neville follows.

“Not near friends, Sirius said,” Harry tells him, a little too stern for what he means, but he can’t take it back.

“Sorry,” Neville bows his head and sulks away.

Another boy takes the table next to Harry, and doesn’t so much as look at him. He’s from Lyria, Harry vaguely recalls, but he speaks to no one, and takes this witcher business all too seriously for someone only ten-and-seven, who isn’t even a witcher, yet.

Harry lays back on the stiff table, which is at a slight angle, so it has a foot rest to stand upon and not slide off. It’s bare slats of wood that create the support, and the nails go awry and press uncomfortably into ones skin. It’s stained with blood. 

Harry grabs the knife off the table to the right of him, and follows the lead of the hooded mage, who instructs the boys to cut their own incisions. Harry holds the knife towards himself and cuts quickly, like he’s sheering roast turkey for dinner, which he did yesterday. Except it’s just a small, deep incision on the vein in the crook of the elbow. An apprentice rushes over and shoves a small glass tip into the vein, and it stings terribly, but Harry doesn’t cry out like some of the other boys, though he wants to. Harry’s apprentice is a young woman with a swathe of cloth covering her mouth, but he can see she is weeping as she binds his ankles and wrists to the table with leather shackles.

The apprentices each crowd to the central table to fill their ladles with a pellucid liquid, only slightly blue in a certain way, and a series of whispers identifies this as Mother’s Tears. Harry’s apprentice is whimpering when she places her hand on the valve of the dripping glass, which will let a measured amount into Harry’s body at her command. They go on the count of the hooded mage, and when he commands to go, the apprentice hesitates. Harry shoves her hand away, the other boys screaming in agony just it hits their blood, and smacks the valve open.


	3. ricochet

Harry was assigned to gather sewent mushrooms in the troll caves this morning, even though there’s a healthy stockpile of them in the basement that might last a decade. It’s something that Uncle Sirius does, makes the boys do errant tasks to keep their hands busy. The Trial of the Grasses was just last week, and Harry is only newly well. Still, here he is, pulling sewent mushrooms out of sticky mud, like he didn’t wake to find sixteen of his companions dead to the very same mutagens that have strengthened him. The living boys will have their ceremony by tomorrow evening, likely, to receive their medallions. But it will only be Neville, Harry, and five others. A good ratio, Sirius told him, a bit weary. Usually it’s only three to every ten.

Perhaps the worst thing is Harry won’t get the smell of troll dung out of his nose until he’s sufficiently simmered his flesh in the bath. It’s curious, because Harry doesn’t feel so different than before. Less nervous, in fact, not nervous ever anymore, not fearful, or terrified. It’s only the habit which remains, and that is fading too. He used to quiver in the troll caves over his basket of mushrooms. Now he smells the change in the air, or hears the loosening of gravel, or the incessant droning before a troll could ever surprise him. And, if a troll dropped in his lap, he’d be hard-pressed to be shaken by it.

But other than that, nothing has left him. Not the annoyance, the impatience, or the anger. Harry supposes he was led to a different impression, but all he can recall is things that others say about witchers. Witchers; Harry reminds himself again that he is a witcher. A little yellow fire lights in his belly, and it’s doused when he remembers the boys that died. He plucks a clump of mushrooms and a happy sprout of green mold, and makes off down the mountain path to the keep.

Uncle Sirius grabs a few baskets off the stack that Harry is manhandling, and together they weave around the halls to the kitchen basement. Sirius isn’t _really_ their uncle, but they call him that, because, well, Harry doesn’t really know why. It’s just something they do. Serendipitously, Sirius was childhood best friends with Harry’s father, and in that way might as well be an uncle to him. He does little to conceal his nepotism

“Your ceremony is tonight at dusk,” Sirius tells him, waggling a thick eyebrow. He is perhaps as old as Harry’s father would be, but he looks no older than twenty, and he’s got a splay of black curly hair that meets his shoulders. _I don’t walk, I swagger_ , he once told Harry, and it’s true. All of the other elder witchers are just that: elder. To see Sirius, young and eccentric, next to the old white wolves is a real sight, but Harry has never questioned it. He is rumored to be one of the best swordsman Kaer Morhen had ever seen, and to no less importance, is intensely paternal.

“Can’t wait,” Harry says, hoisting the baskets on top of his head, awkward as they are to carry in front of his stomach. “Could you— Nevermind.”

“Ugggggh,” Sirius groans, “Brooding, are you? Stop, you look like you’re father.”

“About that,” Harry clears his throat, “I was hoping you could tell me more about them. About what happened to them.”

Sirius’ face goes to stone, and he throws back the door to the basement stairs. Damp air floods up and carries all kinds of smells with it, what with all that is stored down there. It’s an affront to the senses. Both of them cover their noses for the descent. Sirius doesn’t speak for a while, not until they are back in the kitchens, and he’s warming his palms by the fire even though it’s the middle of summer. Harry knows not to push it. _Patience_ , Sirius always says.

After a time, Sirius breaks his silence, which had grown almost meditative, trance-like. “We’ll talk about them,” he says simply, then, “Tonight.” He turns and walks away, two swords on his back. The steel one is named Wolfbite, and the silver is Lune. 

Harry heads to the chambers, small, cramped beds with little distinction between them. Some of them have been cleaned, made, reset. Ready for new initiates in the next cycle. To train for five years, every day, to learn thousand-page bestiaries to the letter, to stand for hours in the rain on a single foot. To die. Harry is lucky, in a small way.

His steel sword is standard issue, so he hasn’t bothered to name it. The silver, however, was a gift on his last birthday. There was no wrapping, no tag, it just appeared on his bed. It’s stunning, carved with elven script along the blade which never gathers blood nor dirt somehow. It’s imbued with a magic which poisons its victim, and lends the metal a serene turquoise glow. He named it the Silver Stag, after his father. Sirius said it was a good name, then insisted that he didn’t gift Harry the blade, with a wink. 

He fixes the scabbards to his back and sheathes the swords. There is a looking glass, though a terribly blurry one, at the far corner of this room. He can see his silhouette, the silhouette of a man, and it shocks him still. When he looks closely, he can tell that his eyes are different colors. In the Trial of Dreams, a witcher’s eyes are mutated to be more powerful than a humans, and they often take on a certain bright amber hue. Only, just one of Harry’s became amber; the other, the eye on the side of his face with the scar, is still green.

Neville is standing in the main hall, surrounded by the other boys, who are hemming and hawing at what he is holding up for them. It’s his medallion, red-eyed, and blackish-silver, the head of a wolf. It’s a witcher‘s best tool, and none would part with theirs willingly, as it grants them a level of sorcerous detection that is needed for fighting most magical beasts. It’s also the best icon of a witcher, and being that it’s rather large and gaudy, you can tell a witcher from his medallion about a mile away.

Harry lays a hand on Neville’s shoulder, “Congratulations.”

“Thank you, Harry,” Neville tells him, sincerely.

It’s bizarre, and Harry feels guilty for the thought, but there is no reason or rhyme that Neville should have survived this long. When he came to Kaer Morhen, he was a sweet, chubby kid and so craven that it made him stubborn. He couldn’t balance a sword, he sneezed on the herbs he picked, and he cried near every night. He’s gotten better with the swords, to be sure, and perhaps he doesn’t cry or sneeze as much, but there is a softness to him that should have broken him open and split him in two. He keeps Harry from drifting too far away, as it is, so Harry doesn’t mind. There’s a great deal of relief knowing Neville somehow survived the Trial, when maybe others deserved it more, or may have been more successful swordsmen. If there are Gods, they chose Neville for something. There’s comfort in that, Harry thinks, but he hopes the Gods didn’t choose him for something too.

Sirius knocks loudly on the wooden door, even though he is inside with them. They all turn to look, and then Neville gives Harry a great shove on the shoulder to egg him on.

The walk up to the Circle of Elements is beautiful, though it’s usually done alone. Sirius promises the other elders that he will leave Harry at the mouth of the troll caves, as it’s meant to be a part of the trial, but it’s an opportunity for peace that Sirius and Harry do not oft get and sorely need.

Harry casts Axii on the trolls to have them decide to fall asleep instead of pester him about his going-ons, and he and Sirius continue to the cliff side, where a large platform is overlooking the horizon. There are several braziers, each indicating an element: earth, air, wind, and fire. In the center, a medallion is placed, wherein it’s charged with and blessed by nature’s magic. Harry lights all of the fires in order, then delicately lays his medallion in the center and steps away. Sirius is leaning on the stone wall, staring down at the rushes of the river below, lit up orange by the sunset. By the time they are done, it will be well into the dark.

“Your father was the least obedient a child could possibly be,” Sirius says, “And Gods, Jenny wished he would behave, your Grandmother, that is. He was their singular child, the heir to their estate, and he was wilder than a nobleman’s son should be,” Sirius smiles, recalling memories. ”We met because our families lived in neighboring estates in Beauclair, and we would hop the hedges and sneak around like bandits in our manicured lawns. We spent every possible minute together. I only made the acquaintance of your mother once, to tell it true, but James told me about her amply and she sounded magnificent.”

“He visited you after you were taken to Kaer Morhen?”

“Of course! Or, I visited him in Beauclair once too, but often we heard a little about the other’s whereabouts and subsequently ran into each other, like destiny, he would say.” Sirius still talks with the accent of a Beauclairois man, even though he was taken away at the small age of twelve. “I saw him the last time not long after your second birthday, when him and Lily had taken up refuge in some small Temerian camp. He was dressed like a common man, and so wiry and paranoid I hardly recognized him anymore.”

“Paranoid? Paranoid of what?”

“It’s a terribly long story, one best told—“

“Oh come on, Sirius.”

“Patience, Harry, please.”

Harry nods, knew Sirius would punish him with silence if he spoke back. The sun sets under the horizon, the sky towards Kaer Morhen a silky indigo, and littered with bright, beautiful stars. The moon is shaped like a thin crescent, waning. In their silence, some commotion is heard, back down the mountain, carrying up the river bed.

Harry looks at Sirius, who is already tuning in. 

“Your medallion, Harry, it must be ready by now,” Sirius says in tones so hurried that it send Harry into that shadow, that habit of panic, but in his chest he feels no such thing.

“Right,” Harry shoves up, grabs the medallion from it’s place on the altar and puts it around his neck. It becomes a piece of him straight away, another appendage from which to gather senses, and it hums dramatically, especially when Harry faces Kaer Morhen.

Sirius breaks into a run, and they sprint past the sleeping trolls, out of the cave and down the mountain. The keep of Kaer Morhen is on fire, spouting smoke into the sky. Harry unsheathes his Silver Stag, and rushes towards the gate.

“Harry, wait!” Sirius calls, “We must go! We have to flee!”

“We can’t flee!’ Harry shouts back, barreling down the hill.

“Go to the stables! We must flee! Trust me!”

Harry thinks he’s crazy, that he’s overreacting, but the medallion buzzes so erratically that it vibrates Harry’s chest cavity, and worse as he closes in. Then, a spell ricochets from some unseen caster, strikes a boy and sends him to the ground. An elder goes charging. It’s not just a fire, it’s an attack. Harry realizes that he knew to draw his sword before he was conscious that there was danger. There would be a small bit of pride for that if Harry had room for it.

“The stables, Harry!” Sirius is still yelling.

Harry doesn’t want to leave, can’t, it would be cowardly, unbrotherly of him. But Sirius is frantic, or as frantic as a witcher can be, so he hangs a right, cuts into the neck of a sorcerer in all black robes on his way by, and heads for the stables.


	4. swallow

Sirius leans on the bar haughtily, as if they could pull even a single measly crown between either of them for some water or a quarter of a warm bed. 

“Come on,” Sirius bargains, with absolutely nothing to offer except a little charm.

The innkeep must be away, because it’s his daughter who’s tending the bar. They’re a good day’s ride from Kaer Morhen, but their horses are beyond fatigued, and even Harry is growing stupid from lack of sleep. The innkeep’s daughter has big, doll eyes, and she stares at Harry and Sirius with equal parts, like she can’t believe there are two _witchers_. Harry shifts a little on his feet. There are boys his age in this inn that are looking at him like they want to string him up a tree in the town square.

Sirius sighs, “Any contracts around here? I’ll do ‘em all for a set of beds, hm?”

The innkeep’s daughter does not reply, just stands frozen, mouth agape.

“Alright,” Sirius slaps the bar, making the girl jump, and walks away.

“I’ve stabled my horses with the blacksmith in this village, once. Perhaps—“ Sirius gives his tired horse a good tug on the reins and Harry does the same, and they walk down the empty main road.

“Where are we going, Sirius?”

“To see a friend of mine.”

“You’ve said that already. Where?”

“Harry. Harry, Harry. You are so like your parents sometimes.”

“Thanks. Where are we going?”

“Ugh,” Sirius hangs his head back and feigns stumbling around to show his annoyance, “Lyria. We’re going to Lyria.”

The blacksmith answers the door in his pajamas, hands all stained in ash and grease. The forge outside is burning low, and so hot that Harry begins to sweat when they walk by. His name is Thom, and he greets Sirius with a startling amount of warmth- after he gets over being rudely awakened late at night. He has two children, Becca and Frye, who climb out of bed and dismiss their father when he orders them back to sleep. Harry sits cross-legged on the floor, and Becca handles the scabbards on his back with reverence. Frye sits close next to him, and asks why his eyes are different colors, and shaped like a cats. Sirius hands Harry a hard hunk of bread.

“Well, it helps me see at night. Like a cat,” Harry tells him, “and I can see farther than you can. I used to wear glasses, but I don’t need them anymore.”

“Wow,” Frye says, then gets up close and stares into Harry’s eyes, examining them. Harry takes a bite of the bread. 

“You can sleep in my bed,” Frye says, “Cause I like to sleep in the loft, anyway.” He points up at a few planks and a bed of straw that are wedged between the walls of the house. There’s a rickety, homemade ladder climbing up to it.

“That’s very neat,” Harry tells him, “And I appreciate it, but you sleep in your bed. You need a good night’s sleep to be—“

“I sleep good in the loft,” Frye nods.

Sirius agrees with the blacksmith that he will get some herbs for the blacksmith’s pregnant wife in exchange for stabling the horses for a night and a bed roll for each of them. 

Harry shakes the mans hand, bows his head in thanks, and they go to unroll their beds in the stable. The summer nights are sticky, but mercifully less hot than the days, so Harry just shoulders off his heavy leather gambeson and tries not to complain.

“Why can’t we go back to Kaer Morhen?” Harry asks Sirius’, who’s on his side, facing away from Harry. 

Sirius hesitates, then says, “I believe the people who came to Kaer Morhen were there for someone. I think that it was you.”

“Me? Why me?” Harry sits up, props on his elbow, picks at a piece of straw.

“I know someone else who will explain it better than I.”

“Your friend? In Lyria?”

“That’s the one.”

“Will they keep chasing us?”

“Yes, Harry. I think so.”

They wake before the sun comes up, when the sky is twilight and hazy. Sirius grabs the list of herbs they need, and promises the man he’ll have them within a day. Harry gives him his gratitude, and Frye hugs his legs before he goes, so Harry promises he’ll see them again.

Sirius recites the list, then asks Harry to tell him where the herbs might be found.

“Um, Berbercane fruit, plentiful on mountainsides, red fruit on a bulbous bush.”

“Good, and Crow’s Eye?”

“Crow’s eye, single, bluish berry protruding out of a quad-leafed plant.”

“Celandine?”

“Small cluster of yellow flowers, the flowers carry the potent oil, found in fields.”

“Good, Harry. The good news is if we find a bit extra and can manage to get some flasks, well, we’ve got the makings of some Swallow on our hands.”

“Right,” Harry agrees, picking up on the subtlety in which Sirius just told him they will likely need healing potions.


	5. mida

Most of the herbs, incidentally, are picked completely over. It is the summer after all, and it’s likely that the townspeople are hoping for some extra crowns from the herbalist, so it’s a more difficult expedition than Sirius planned for. They only have a hand full of Celandine flowers and a single Crow’s Eye by high noon. The sun is scorching, and Harry isn’t used to missing so many meals. He lays his gambeson over the back of his horse and continues shirtless, still sweating. There’s a little stream flowing from the top of a hill, so he cups some tepid water and slurps it into his mouth, then dunks his head in and watches minnows float by. 

There’s a patch of untouched Berbercane bushes clustered at the top of the hill, probably because the climb is somewhat steep and requires shimmying up several rock formations that look unforgiving. Harry points at them, and Sirius hitches the horses to a tree and they make towards the bushes. Harry’s medallion gives a little hum, but he’s sure it’s a mistake, until it happens again, then more consistently as he climbs the rocks.

Sirius pauses against the rock wall and shuts his eyes to listen. “A mountain cat,” he says, then, “No. No it’s a Noonwraith.”

Harry hears the screech which makes Sirius decide so, and his heart gives the echo of a thump, but doesn’t really. Leftovers of fear, fading a bit each time.

“You ever fought a Noonwraith?” Harry asks, whispering.

“No, but a Nightwraith,” Sirius grins, “How different are they, really. Careful, Harry. Try not to be seen.” Sirius then hoists up the hill and sinks low to the ground, drawing his silver Lune, and skirting the large Berbercane bushes.

Harry follows, and sinks just as low, raising his hand the hilt of his Silver Stag. In the distance, inside of a meadow which is so brightly lit by what seems like a centralized beam of sunlight, is a beautiful young bride, dancing alone. She has long, braided hair, and pretty, simple face with tanned skin, and she’s slender in her white dress. She spins haplessly, weeping a little, and then stops. She locks eyes with Harry and smiles, a sad smile, tears dripping from her eyes. She reaches her hands out gently and beckons him forward, so he stands, leaves his sword in it’s sheath, and walks towards her. 

She’s just as pretty up close, big, teary brown eyes and a welcoming face. She grabs Harry’s hands, and she’s shockingly cold, but she sweeps them into a dance, like one might at their wedding. Harry spins her, and pulls her in, and she weeps against his chest. 

Sirius grunts somewhere off in the distance and the small, purple runes of the sign Yrden appear around Harry and his bride. She pulls back from him in anger, shoves him away the ground and lifts her arms in the air to scream. Her white dress melts away, twists, becomes tattered. Her flesh sizzles and burns and rots. Her jaw falls limp, dangling, and her tongue flies from it’s place, a foot long and dripping with gore. She still wears her veiled crown but the flowers wilt. She raises up in the air above Harry who scurries back out of the Yrden circle and pulls his sword from the scabbard.

The Noonwraith seems to be trapped inside the runic circle and she bumps against this invisible wall with such bubbling rage that Harry can feel it. He can feel her despair, her anger, her dread. It’s something they don’t tell you in the bestiaries and he wonders how many lose their last fights to these specters, these long-dead women.

Sirius charges at her, turning her attention away from Harry for long enough that he can correct his footing and shake off the incredible despair that she’s bestowed on him. She has beams of sunlight coming out of the holes in her body and she is waving in and out of corporeality, one moment real and the next covered by the veil of the other world. Sirius’ Yrden ward is fading, so Harry casts it again, and the specter becomes fully corporeal once more. She wags her gigantic tongue at him, her eyes dead, white, and angry. 

Harry strikes her in her back once, and then reaches around to cut open her stomach. The stench is disgusting, worse than anything Harry thinks he’s ever smelled, pure death and decay retching from her innards. She spins a vortex of dust so that Harry can hardly see her or Sirius, and he refrains from waving his sword blindly for fear of injuring his companion in her stead.

Suddenly, she is across the clearing, and just as well she is elsewhere, and elsewhere. She is so many forms that Harry can’t count. All of them dance, and none looks more or less real than the others. Sirius and Harry press their backs together and spin around, searching for her, swords out like barriers.

“Harry!” Sirius shouts. One of the Noonwraiths is launching at him, great spindly fingers with long, ridged nails in the shape of a claw. Harry cuts her hand off, and all of the other Noonwraiths scream in agony.

Sirius throws his knife into her chest and she collapses, but does not fade or die, not yet. There has to be something in this area which ties her, and it’s literally a needle in a haystack, a ring buried in the dirt, a groom long since decayed. She lays on the ground, and Sirius tends to a binding circle once more, constantly this time, and instructs Harry to look for her keepsake.

He doesn’t even know where to start, but he haunts around in the woods, sweating so badly that it runs off his forehead in drops. There are no smells, no significant tracks, no burial mounds. And then, he sees something, a man-made shape in the woods. It’s a wedding arch with several years of growth clinging to it. On the ground, there is a distinct shape of leather covered in dust which Harry pulls from the earth. It leaves a hole beneath it where there is wet ground and worms. It’s a journal, Harry surmises, and one of excellent craftsmanship. The pages are half-rotted out and the leather on the back is weak and wet. It cannot be read, but he assumes it bears some significance to the woman, so he places atop the arch. It takes several casts of Igni to light a sufficient fire that it will burn properly, and the Noonwraith screams in the distance in response.

He runs back to Sirius, who is fighting her once more. Harry runs towards her, swords straight up in the air, and leaps. He wraps his legs around her exposed pelvis, the bones cracking and pulling apart at his weight. His sword cuts through her spine like butter, and her head goes rolling as Harry crashed down with her body.

They wait a moment, listening to the birds and squirrels singing, leaves rustling, feeling the heat of the summer sun. Harry lays on the grown, breathing deeply. She scratched him, big clawing marks along his rip cage, but his bleeding is slow, and it will heal, surely. Sirius sinks to his knees and begins laughing, then cuts away her tongue as a trophy.

“There’s probably a contract for this one. What did you find?” Sirius asks.

“Journal. Wedding arch.” Harry takes deep, slow breaths, and closes his eyes.

“You did good, Harry. Nothing like a first fight.”

Harry smiles, then, permits himself to. They gather the wealth of Berbercane fruit and Sirius figures he might reason with the blacksmith that the Celandine was well picked over, and he’ll have to be satisfied with the handful, though they do cross some Crow’s Eyes in the farmers field. They have to duck low and steal them, but who will know the difference?

Sirius stops at the notice board, flips through some sun-bleached parchments looking for a noonwraith warrant, but finds nothing and looks down at his sad, disgusting sack of tongue with disdain. 

The blacksmith is well and grateful for the bounty of herbs, and so is his wife. Frye and Becca beg Harry to stay, and he fancies telling them yes, but Sirius has a lead on who may have known the Noonwraith, so they’re off again.

It’s the villages leatherworker, Silagrim. He’s a stout old man, perhaps in his sixtieth year, but he’s practiced at his craft. The leather and oil smell permeates the air around his home, especially in the sun where he’s tanning new hides.

“A… noom wraith?” Silagrim asks them, sweating over a bench where he is coloring some leather a deep purple with some pomegranate, an expensive dye. His brown hands are stained pinkish too.

“A _Noonwraith_ ,” Sirius says, slowly. “A young woman, a bride, who died before being able to marry.”

“I don’t know anyone like that,” the man looks down at his hide for a while, then continues scrubbing.

There’s a woman in the window, eyes brown, hair braided, and she’s older, and she’s quite pretty. She storms out of the front door and crosses her arms. 

“Mida,” is all she says, and she stares at Silagrim when she says it. He flinches horribly, and his shoulders lift up as if he’s covering himself from something he doesn’t want to see. “It’s Mida. You know it is.”

“It’s not,” he whispers. He whispers it a few more times, and the woman rolls her eyes.

“Our daughter, Mida, died years ago. She was only sixteen, but was set to be married. We had the carpenter fashion her this arch in the woods, a fairytale, like we’d read to her. She was to marry a regular peasant boy, and we had no dowry to give, so it was best that way. Besides, it was clear she loved the boy. Except, ‘fore they married, he was found to be a traitor. She loved him anyway. So they hung her too, in the tree next to him. Makes no sense. But they did it.”

“And you still stayed, after they killed your daughter?”

“What else were we to do?” Silagrim shrugged. “We’ve other children. We had no crowns to go at the time, and we’ve got the leather working market in this valley. We paid our penance to the Ealdorman and kept our peace.”

The woman began crying, but showed little indication in her hardened expression, “It’s local know-how not to go on the hill. I’ve never gone myself to see if it’s true, or just something mean some children made up.”

Sirius raised the bagged tongue, and rot drips out of it. Both Silagrim and Mida’s mother wince.

“She’s at rest, now,” Harry says quietly.

“Suppose you want some pay, then, witchers?” Silagrim looks up at Harry, then Sirius.

Before Harry can deny it, Sirius nods his head, and Silagrim scrubs his stained hands over his eyes. “I’ve some boiled leather jerkins you can pick from, is all.”

Harry picks a black one which fits him nicely, except it’s a little short. Sirius chooses a dark brown leather, one that is perhaps form over function, but still, the leather is exceptional and strong. They bid the leatherworker and his wife farewell, and drop Mida’s tongue in a swampy lay beneath a bridge.


	6. fingerful

The road to Lyria is peaceful, and much lighter and more pleasant outside the old, thick gambeson and in the new, sleeveless jerkin, which Harry says a bit of grace for often. Bless Silagrim and his wife and their children, and especially Mida, because Gods, it’s nice not to have swampy armpits. 

Their horses are not saddled, but it’s how Harry was trained to ride anyway and witchers flesh is tough, so the saddle sores are but light, faint itches between the thighs. Sirius says they’re two days out from the city when they unfurl their bedrolls and curate a little stack of kindling for a fire. Harry roasts a rabbit on a spit. They’ve grown so used to sleeping in the woods and forging their own that they needn’t speak on it or their roles anymore, it just works, a well-oiled clock. Harry hurts desperately for a bath, one which he never got after picking those sewent mushrooms.

Aldersberg is the name of smaller city just outside of Lyria. It’s fitted with gigantic stone walls that pop over the horizon miles off and sports a healthy flow of traders in and out, so the road to it is busy, cramped even. Sirius pays the herbalist for some flasks which he fixes to his belt, and they take contracts for some river Drowners and a particular wolf from the notice board. They never do go after the wolf, even though it’s a good offer of forty crowns for the head, but they do scalp the drowners for their fins and collect the measly recompense. Sirius splits it with Harry and they each buy a saddle for their horses, and Harry scores a new set of boots from the local cobbler. He throws the old ones to the side of the road. 

Sirius sticks a prying hand in Harry’s coin purse and picks around at the finger-full of coppers that Harry’s got left before he can swat him away.

“We’ve got enough for the pub,” Sirius says, not asking, and walks off to hitch his horse along the troughs on offer outside.

Harry is acutely aware of the ample gawking when they walk in, Sirius first and then Harry, and they are examined in such an order by most of the pub goers. A little silence comes over the room leaving the bard to fill the space with his bawdy song. Sirius walks like he owns the place, as if his pants didn’t stink of the road and his hair of sweat. There’s a set of redheads at the bar, from Skellige most like, drawing from the accent. The girl laughs- roars, really- at what may have been her own joke, and her companions laugh with her. Her hair is a deep orange, so shiny and straight it moves like a sheet of silk. She throws it over her shoulder when she turns to size up Sirius, then notices Harry.

“Oy, Fred, some witchers,” she smacks her companion, who turns to ogle. 

Harry nods curtly at her, then at Fred, and pushes up to the bar, mimicking Sirius’ order of a pale. He tosses three coppers down and waits.

“I’m Ginevra of An Skellig,” the girl says, spinning a ringed finger around the rim of her drink. Harry gathers from the scent coming off her that it’s summerwine. Oddly, though she smells like bergamot and vanilla, she also smells like wet animal. She bats her eyelashes in a fashion that could be mistaken as flirting.

“I’m Harry… erm, of Toussaint.” It’s continent tradition to state one’s heralding country in greeting, not Skelligan, but she is here, after all. There’s no mistaking the thick accent.

The bartender shoves two mugs on the bar and Ginevra raises her finger in a call for more wine. She turns on her stool, totally ignoring her companions to stare at Harry, and leans backwards against the bar. She must be young, no older than twenty, and she wears Skelligan garb that’s striped red and green. A little, well-balanced dagger hangs from her belt.

“Coming from the witcher castle?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

“Where you headed?”

“Lyria,” Harry says, then Sirius gives him a little jab beneath the bar. Harry turns away from her, takes a sip of his ale. 

“Fred and I are going to Lyria,” she clicks her tongue, “Leaving in the mornin’.”

Harry nods, knocks back a half of his mug.

“Speaking of, I’m turning in,” she leans forward, breathes into Harry’s ear, and whispers, “Third door on the right. Knock twice, I’ll let you in.” She gives him a friendly pat on the back and retreats to her room. 

“Pretty,” Sirius elbows Harry, “But nosy. Still, don’t gotta talk to do what she wants.”

“I’ve never—“ Harry starts, then closes his mouth.

“Got to start sometime,” Sirius shrugs, “And if you play it right, we can save the coppers on your room.”

Harry sucks his ale back, exhales, and kicks away from the bar, leaving Sirius chortling after him.


	7. calendula

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ****this chapter is literally just hinny smut so squick warning.**** we do NOT know movie!ginny in this house. she does not exist. this is ~ginevra~ who is cool, and badass, and also has a personality and storyline outside of being obsessed with harry. 
> 
> u don’t need to read this to understand the rest of the story, though, so pass it up if you are die-hard drarry lol

Harry knocks on the door twice and interrupts Ginevra singing a folk song in her mother tongue. Harry can hear the splashing of water, the smell of lavender and calendula, then the padding of bare feet on stone and dripping water. She peaks around the door, her long, wet hair swinging behind, and yanks Harry inside.

She’s bare naked, skin wet and steaming from the bath, and she towels off with something she pulls from the bed. “Go on,” she points to the basin, filled with steaming water and flowers, “Rinse up, now.”

Harry clears his throat, then plucks the strings on the side of his jerkin which he mindfully thinks to give a good wipe down when he’s done.

She’s very pretty, and removed from her impressive stack of armor (which she’s piled unceremoniously in the corner) she is quite small. Her boots do well to add to her stature, but really she just reaches Harry’s shoulders.“Do you witchers talk?” she looks at Harry over her shoulder, eyebrow raised, smirking.

“No, they cut our tongues out.” Harry kicks off his boots, then his pants, resists the urge to cover up.

Ginevra does that laugh, the roaring one, way too loud and melodious for what’s been offered, but Harry isn’t complaining. She’s pretty when she throws her head back like that, cocks her hip to the side so her ass rounds in her silhouette. Harry has never seen a girl naked except in clinical textbooks wherein the are intestines exposed and discussions of rot, autopsy, and other, less than stimulating topics cover the parchment. Women are softer than those drawings, rosier, or at least Ginevra is. She’s freckled down to her feet too, just the same as her cheeks.

Harry sinks into the bath and groans, feeling the knots in his muscles un-work, the tension seep out into the water. To a small measure of disgust, he can see the dirt sloughing off his body too, clouding up the water around him, so he dips in, scrubs his face and his scalp, and rises back up. Ginevra is standing by the tub, fingers waving on the surface of the water.

“Need help?” she whispers, low, soft. She walks her fingers like tiny legs across the water as she skirts the tub, walking in tandem, giggling. She is standing behind him when reaches her small hands around and spreads them down Harry’s scalp, past his ears, down his chest. He can feel that her hands are thickly calloused, but they have softened in the water to the point of pruning. Her hair falls in a curtain by his face, and she rests her head on his neck, fingers traveling down beneath the water. ”If you don’t start talking soon, I’ll be afeared you don’t want it,” she whines.

Harry cranes his neck to look at her. Something stirs, he feels himself hardening at her touch, so he tells her, “I do,” in a gruff voice. He would be nervous. He _would be_. She takes him into her hand and tugs, and he grips her arm and tugs back, then turns around to get a firm grip on her waist and pull her into his lap in the bath. She is wide-eyed, startled, but excited. She laughs, drawing in close to his face and breathing hot air against his lips, grinding her hips down on his cock. Harry is glad she knows what she’s doing, because he wouldn’t know how to pace it. 

Her eyes are bright blue, even in the dim light of just a few candles. She braces herself on Harry’s neck with one hand and his knee with the other, and nods down to her spread legs, some kind of cue, so he touches her, watches her flinch. There’s one spot, one that makes her breath hitch and her pupils blow, so he keeps rubbing it, if awkwardly, if a little unskilled. Even in the bath water she is slick, and it has him twitching, leaking slick of his own. He takes himself into hand, then grabs her by the hip and lines up. 

He presses into something, but there’s no give, so he adjusts a little lower and finds it, and she sinks down on him in response. Her lips part, her eyes close, then some sound comes from deep inside her belly and spills out of her mouth. She’s warm, velvety inside, soft and glove-like, and he can feel her flexing and rutting and moving. Her tits bounce in languid circles, and together they find a rhythm, Harry slamming up as she presses down. He finds her spot again, but she swats his hand away and rubs herself, and her sounds get louder and louder. Blood rushes in Harry’s ears; he could be moaning too, he doesn’t know. Not bad for a first time, he thinks, somewhere off in his mind. Ginevra bends over, bites his shoulders and moans slow, guttural, desperate, and her back pulsates. 

It makes Harry fall over the edge, and he spills into her, moves her body by his grip on the fat of her ass and rides out the wave. She kisses him on the nose and giggles as she climbs from the tub, then offers him a towel.


End file.
